Raúl Alarcón Jr.

Raúl Alarcón Jr. is the president, CEO and chairman of the Spanish Broadcasting System (SBS).  SBS is a media company that Alarcón Jr. formed with his father Pablo Raul Alarcón, in 1983. SBS is a publicly traded media company with radio, television and Internet properties geared to the growing US Hispanic population. The company owns key radio properties in diversified markets like Los Angeles, New York, Puerto Rico, Chicago, Miami and San Francisco. The company also has a division called SBS Entertainment, which produces live concerts in selected markets anchored by their radio station presence.

Born in Havana, Cuba in 1956 to Pablo Raul Alarcón, already a successful entrepreneur with 14 radio stations in Cuba, the family fled Cuba in 1960 with Alarcón Sr. as a political refugee. Once in New York City, the father had various positions in Spanish radio stations, and the son attended Fordham University with the intent to become a doctor. In 1983, his father borrowed $3.5 million to purchase an AM station in New York, WSKQ and his father asked him to run the sales department as an account executive at age 27. The father-son pair agreed on a partnership and together they formed Spanish Broadcasting System, (SBS.)

Within five years, the company was profitable and generated sales of $20 million by 1988. By then, Alarcon Jr. had been promoted to be the company’s President and had a seat on the board of directors. With extra capital available due to the success of their modern Spanish format at WSKQ AM in New York City, the company was able to buy its second property and its first FM station, KLAX in Los Angeles. 

Having a foot in east and west markets, the company clearly needed more capital to build an empire of Spanish language stations as they envisioned, so in 1991, the company went public, raising over $400 million which gave them plenty of room to grow. In 1994, Alarcon Jr. became the CEO and chairman of the board of the company, which now had radio stations, television offerings in select markets and via Direct TV, and a division devoted to concert production called SBS Entertainment. SBS also began to acquire an Internet presence, starting with the purchase of JuJu Media, publishers of a Spanish-English website called LaMusica.com.

As of 1999, Alarcon became the company’s chairman and the company currently owns over twenty radio stations across the country and now in Puerto Rico. The company is based out of South Florida.